Page:Natural History, Reptiles.djvu/97

Rh. A Gecko, confident in his powers of flight, appears boldly to await his adversary, and his sudden disappearance at a nearer approach adds to the horror which his uncouth form inspires. The poor Geckos, too, have a bad name. They are supposed to poison whatever they touch, be it animate or inanimate, and their saliva is said to vex the skin of those on whom it falls with foul eruptions. Many of these cuticular irritations, when they have actually existed from the intervention of these animals, may have arisen from the extremely sharp claws of a Gecko running over a sleeping man, or small blisters may have been raised by the adherent apparatus at the bottom of its feet.”

The explanation here given of the baneful effects supposed to be produced by the feet of some species of this Family, though repeated in most works on the subject, seems to us futile and unsatisfactory. We do not believe that the adhesion of the suckers of the toes of these minute animals would produce the smallest appreciable result on the skin of a man, in the way of raising blisters, nor that the muscular power with which the little claws are moved would be sufficient to pierce the flesh.

The genera and species which compose the Family are rather numerous, and are scattered over all the great divisions of the globe. Europe, however, has but two, neither of which is found in the British Isles. To Asia, Africa, America, and Australasia, the remainder are distributed in about equal proportions, each of these regions having twelve or fourteen species; the whole amounting to between fifty and sixty.